This political allegory predates George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four by seven years, but shares with it a critical view of totalitarian efficiency. The Aerodrome features two contrasting settings, highlighting the crucial differences and quintessential weaknesses of both: the unnamed village represents… Read More ›
Dr. Samuel Johnson once claimed that “nothing odd can last.” As an example, he cited Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, which had temporarily fallen from favor. Over two centuries later, that same novel may well… Read More ›
Although written in 1846, Charlotte Brontë’s first novel, The Professor, would not be published until after her 1855 death. Clearly autobiographical, it served as a model for her later, more fully developed version of her experiences in Brussels as a… Read More ›
Published like Charles Dickens’s other works, first as a serial from May 1864 through November 1865, Our Mutual Friend reflects the author’s traditional multiple plots. It would be Dickens’s final completed work, and some critics see it as the culmination… Read More ›
Likely Charles Dickens’s best-known novel, Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy’s Progress, first appeared in serial form in Bentley’s Miscellany between February 1837 and April 1839. The author’s third novel, it would later become the most dramatized of any fictional… Read More ›
As one of Charles Dickens’s early works, The Old Curiosity Shop, first published in the periodical Master Humphrey’s Clock from April 1840 to February 1841, was a favorite among his contemporary readers. That favorable reception changed over time, as readers… Read More ›
As did most novels by George Gissing, The Odd Women focused on working-class poor in an uncaring society. The novel opens with six happy sisters, living with their widower physician father. He believes that women should not have to worry… Read More ›
Despite criticism of Catherine Grace Gore’s work by notables such as William Makepeace Thackeray, it proved highly popular in its day and included some novels deemed superior to others. One of her best works, Mrs. Armytage, or, Female Domination, excels… Read More ›
Jane Austen began writing Mansfield Park in 1811 but did not publish it until 1814. With this, the penultimate novel published during her lifetime, she focused on financially comfortable small communities of individuals, raising the quotidian to a level of… Read More ›
Thomas Love Peacock published his first novel, Headlong Hall, anonymously, reflecting in it his dislike of progress and all of its “new-fangled” ideas. In what would become a regular approach for Peacock, Headlong Hall presents a satiric discussion in Platonic… Read More ›
Thomas Hardy’s fourth novel, Far from the Madding Crowd, became his first commercially successful venture, allowing him to leave his vocation of architecture and write full time. First published as a serial in The Cornhill Magazine from January through December… Read More ›
The third in his sequence of Palliser novels, The Eustace Diamonds represents one of Anthony Trollope’s darkest tales. He departs from his gently ironic presentations of everyday human relationships with their small but important emotional battles. This novel focuses on… Read More ›
One of Elizabeth Gaskell’s best-known novels, Cranford, focuses on an English community of mature women, to which men seldom gain admittance. It first appeared in series form (1851–53) in Charles Dickens’s periodical Household Words and was meant only as a… Read More ›
Charles Reade’s popular historical romance, The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages, represented the labor of two years. Reade was hired in 1859 by the publishers of Once a Week to help that periodical compete with… Read More ›
A label often applied to the last half of the 18th century, the Age of Johnson takes its name from Samuel Johnson, lexicographer, critic, scholar, poet, and novelist most well known for his DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1755). With… Read More ›
Although a first authorized published edition of Mac Flecknoe; or, A satyr upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S. by John Dryden appeared in Miscellaney Poems in 1684, it had been circulated in unapproved versions since 1682. Critics cannot pinpoint the year… Read More ›
John Milton had known Edward King at Cambridge and wrote Lycidas (1638) as an elegy for his friend’s death. When word arrived that King had drowned in the Irish Sea returning to Dublin in 1637, his many friends were strongly… Read More ›
Scholars of the works of John Donne continue the search for various elements in his poetry to aid in the dating of their creation and even in the ways to refer to the poems. As Donne did not title his… Read More ›
John Dryden wrote The Hind and the Panther (1687) in order to contribute to an ongoing dispute between Protestant and Catholic factions. While his exact date of conversion from devotion to the Church of England to Catholicism remains uncertain, it… Read More ›
The Good Morrow was first published in John Donne’s posthumous collection Songs and Sonnets (1633) and ranks among his best known love poems. Critics have developed various theories regarding the poem’s symbolism, many relating to the Platonic theory of love…. Read More ›
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